Tis the Season

The Design of the Advent Candle Pedestals

Advent Candle Pedestals

I recently had an opportunity to build 2 sets of advent candle pedestals for my local Church, Twin City Bible Church.

With this project I was able to collaborate with an architect Josh Rucinski. This was wonderful because he provided a 3D model/design of the pedestals using Google SketchUP. I know a lot of people in the furniture and woodworking profession use it to sketch ideas.

This was my first time using it as a template/blueprint...I am kind of old school in that I still use a pen and paper, sometimes I use Adobe Illustrator if I need to be more accurate. One of the main reasons why I don't use a 3D tool is that it takes time. Time is something I have very little of and I like the idea of quickly sketching my idea down on paper and taking it out to my shop to reference.

I have learned that no matter how good your design is or how much thought and time you put into it, there is always something that happens or comes up that you couldn't anticipate and I like the idea of having my idea on paper in my shop for me to make adjustments to. I like to think of my design as a reference point not an end point.

Materials for the Advent Candle Pedestals

The materials list for this project is rather simple. All you need is A/B Grade Birch Plywood, Titebond 3 glue, brad nails, stain, and polyurethane. I use Varathane for all my wood working projects, in my opinion it is the best polyurethane on the market.

Tools Needed to Make the Advent Candle Pedestals

The tools needed to make the pedestals are listed below. I also have a more detailed list of my tools on my tools page here.